Why Russia Hasn’t Invaded Ukraine

[Blackleaf]

Kinda like the poor bastards on the turd in the Atlantic punchbowl that live across the channel from Germany.

Britain isn't in Germany's shadow the way the Republic of Ireland is in Britain's or Canada is in America's.

Germany's population is only around a third bigger than Britain's and it's declining, whereas Britain's is growing and will soon overtake it. Britain's economy is on course to overtake Germany's too. Compare that to Canada, whose population is only around a tenth that of the US, and the Republic of Ireland, whose population is a mere one-fourteenth that of its large neighbour the UK (the UK has a city with a larger population than the Republic of Ireland).

You'll have to wait until Hell freezes over for Canada to overtake America or Ireland to overtake Britian.

 

[Curious Cdn]

You won't have to wait for hell to freeze over for Canada to overtake Britain as the senior member of the Commonwealth. Not only is our population steadily advancing, we have the human and natural resources to become a substantial and wealthy power (if the population ever got their heads out of their beer glasses) ... perhaps not another U.S.A. but a significant player none the less. It's possible but not inevitable.

 

[gore0bsessed]

I just read, this morning, on a British board that Nemtsov was killed by Islamisists because of some comment he had made on the Charlie Hebdo thing. His vocal opposition to Vladimir Putin had absolutely nothing to do with it and if anything, the Russian Federation goes out of its way to protect opposition politicians like Nemtsov. Well, there's progress. Islam is to blame! It used to be the Jews that the Russians would point their fingers at.

The author of that particular theory on that British board is one of the mods!

REALLY! ... and he's famous for his unconditional support of Putin because, clearly, anything that goes wrong in his world is the fault of the Americans.

Nemtsov has been openly critical of Putin since 2000. Only drooling morons would think Putin had anything to do with this, particularly since it happened so close to the Kremlin. The irony in thinking Islam, Jews or the Brits had anything to do with it is CRAZY TALK but that Putin did it is so rational and obvious definitely gave me a chuckle,

 

[Curious Cdn]

Nemtsov has been openly critical of Putin since 2000. Only drooling morons would think Putin had anything to do with this, particularly since it happened so close to the Kremlin. The irony in thinking Islam, Jews or the Brits had anything to do with it is CRAZY TALK but that Putin did it is so rational and obvious definitely gave me a chuckle,

So, Barak Obama dood it with Angela Merkel driving the Trabant?

How quaint.

I haven't met a good 19th century mind like this in quite some time.

Do you view Putin as some sort of fellow traveler?

 

[Blackleaf]

The Muslims did it?

Do you really believe that?

Why not just blame the Jews ... the traditional, default boogeymen in that part of the planet?

Then again, the Russians are ALWAYS victims. Just ask any Russian. Perpetual victimhood absolves you of all responsibility in the world, if you hadn't already noticed.

No. Much more likely to be the Muslims, when you consider that Russia has had its fair share of Muslim terrorism perpetrated by Chechen spearatists.

It’s the EU (and its armed wing Nato) that’s empire-building, not Putin

Two sides are required for a New Cold War — and there is no obvious need for an adversarial system in post-Soviet Europe

Peter Hitchens
7 March 2015
120 Comments

Just for once, let us try this argument with an open mind, employing arithmetic and geography and going easy on the adjectives. Two great land powers face each other. One of these powers, Russia, has given up control over 700,000 square miles of valuable territory. The other, the European Union, has gained control over 400,000 of those square miles. Which of these powers is expanding?

There remain 300,000 neutral square miles between the two, mostly in Ukraine. From Moscow’s point of view, this is already a grievous, irretrievable loss. As Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the canniest of the old Cold Warriors, wrote back in 1997, ‘Ukraine… is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.’

This diminished Russia feels the spread of the EU and its armed wing, Nato, like a blow on an unhealed bruise. In February 2007, for instance, Vladimir Putin asked sulkily, ‘Against whom is this expansion intended?’

I have never heard a clear answer to that question. The USSR, which Nato was founded to fight, expired in August 1991. So what is Nato’s purpose now? Why does it even still exist?

There is no obvious need for an adversarial system in post-Soviet Europe. Even if Russia wanted to reconquer its lost empire, as some believe (a belief for which there is no serious evidence), it is too weak and too poor to do this. So why not invite Russia to join the great western alliances? Alas, it is obvious to everyone, but never stated, that Russia cannot ever join either Nato or the EU, for if it did so it would unbalance them both by its sheer size. There are many possible ways of dealing with this. One would be an adult recognition of the limits of human power, combined with an understanding of Russia’s repeated experience of invasions and its lack of defensible borders.

Of Europe's two great powers - the EU and Russia - it is the EU which is expansionist

But we do not do this. Instead we have a noisy pseudo-moral crusade, which would not withstand five minutes of serious consideration. Mr Putin’s state is, beyond doubt, a sinister tyranny. But so is Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, which locks up far more journalists than does Russia. Turkey is an officially respectable Nato member, 40 years after seizing northern Cyprus, which it still occupies, in an almost exact precedent for Russia’s seizure of Crimea. If Putin disgusts us so much, then why are we and the USA happy to do business with Erdogan, and also to fawn upon Saudi Arabia and China?

Contrary to myth, the expansion of the EU into the former communist world has not magically brought universal peace, love and prosperity. Croatia’s economy has actually gone backwards since it joined. Corruption still exists in large parts of the EU’s new south-eastern territories, and I am not sure that the rule of law could be said to have been properly established there. So the idea that the recruitment of Ukraine to the ‘West’ will magically turn that troubled nation into a sunny paradise of freedom, probity and wealth is perhaps a little idealistic, not to say mistaken.

It is all so much clearer if we realise that this quarrel is about power and land, not virtue. In truth, much of the eastward expansion of Nato was caused by the EU’s initial unwillingness to take in backward, bankrupt and corrupt refugee states from the old Warsaw Pact. The policy could be summed up as ‘We won’t buy your tomatoes, but if it makes you happy you can shelter under our nuclear umbrella’. The promise was an empty assurance against a nonexistent threat. But an accidental arrangement hardened into a real confrontation. The less supine Russia was, the more its actions were interpreted as aggression in the West. Boris Yeltsin permitted western interests to rape his country, and did little to assert Russian power. So though he bombarded his own parliament, conducted a grisly war in Chechnya, raised corruption to Olympic levels and shamelessly rigged his own re-election, he yet remained a popular guest in western capitals and summits. Vladimir Putin’s similar sins, by contrast, provide a pretext for ostracism and historically illiterate comparisons between him and Hitler.

This is because of his increasing avowal of Russian sovereignty, and of an independent foreign policy. There have been many East-West squabbles and scrimmages, not all of them Russia’s fault. But the New Cold War really began in 2011, after Mr Putin dared to frustrate western — and Saudi — policy in Syria. George Friedman, the noted US intelligence and security expert, thinks Russia badly underestimated the level of American fury this would provoke. As Mr Friedman recently told the Moscow newspaper Kommersant, ‘It was in this situation that the United States took a look at Russia and thought about what it [Russia] wants to see happen least of all: instability in Ukraine.’

Mr Friedman (no Putin stooge) also rather engagingly agrees with Moscow that overthrow last February of Viktor Yanukovych was ‘the most blatant coup in history’. He is of course correct, as anyone unclouded by passion can see. The test of any action by your own side is to ask what you would think of it if the other side did it.

If Russia didn’t grasp how angry Washington would get over Syria, did the West realise how furiously Russia would respond to the EU Association Agreement and to the fall of Yanukovych? Perhaps not. Fearing above all the irrecoverable loss to Nato of its treasured naval station in Sevastopol, Russia reacted. After 23 years of sullenly appeasing the West, Moscow finally said ‘enough’. Since we’re all supposed to be against appeasement, shouldn’t we find this action understandable in a sovereign nation, even if we cannot actually praise it? And can anyone explain to me precisely why Britain, of all countries, should be siding with the expansion of the European Union and Nato into this dangerous and unstable part of the world?


It’s Nato that’s empire-building, not Putin » The Spectator

 

[Curious Cdn]

The difference being that Russia is a thugocracy that wants to crush the life out of it's neighbours. They will hopefully populate someone else's traditional territory with Russians as a means of ethically cleansing and expanding Russian Territory, permanently.

The E.U. is a trade zone ...run by a multinational, elected commitee and not by an oligarch of ex-KGB strong arms.

Can you blame any of them for preferring the E.U. over dictatorship? The Russians are dinosaurs from another, earlier phase of national evolution. If they can kick their nineteenth century jingoistic habits, they too might be invited to join in a united European trade zone.

 

[Never]

Why Russia Hasn’t Invaded Ukraine | Thick Toast
The United States engages in lies to justify its actions abroad. A notable example of this is the underwhelming proof it provided that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. After 2.4 trillion dollars spent and over a million deaths, we all know how that ended.

This proof is a prerequisite for US aggression, is a pretense for invasion, and is typically fabricated. Take, for instance, Syria. The goal of the United States: invade Syria. The pretense for war: chemical weapons. However, Putin brilliantly deescalated this volatile situation by interceding on behalf of Assad, thus thwarting the real US goal of starting war in Syria. Not to be bested, the US invented another pre-text for Syria invasion: ISIS. But I digress, the point is that in order to interfere with other countries, the US will fabricate an onus for initiating hostilities.
False Pretense For Meddling in Ukraine
Like George W Bush saying terrorists “hate us because we’re free”, the Ukraine version of this cheesy, illogical pretext-for-war-building is “Putin wants to rebuild the former Soviet Union and annex Ukraine.” It’s a lie. It doesn’t stand up to logic. That’s why I give you the top 5 reasons why Putin has not, and will not invade Ukraine.
#1: Occam’s Razor
From wikipedia:
The principle states that among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. Other, more complicated solutions may ultimately prove correct, but—in the absence of certainty—the fewer assumptions that are made, the better.
Use of Occam’s Razor is debate 101, and since we’re in a debate here, I’m going to invoke it. If you’re not used to dealing with it, let me give you a simple example. You’re hungry. Why are you hungry? Maybe a leprechaun hijacked an alien’s flying saucer and crash landed in your back yard, and needs to find a new power source which just happens to be the pizza you ate last night, and used a teleporter beam to extract the pizza you ate before sleep, making you hungry. Or maybe you’re hungry because you haven’t eaten yet today. Which is the most likely? The one with the fewest assumptions.
Lets apply Occam’s Razor to the question, “Does Russia want to invade Ukraine?” The assumption: Russia wants to invade Ukraine. Putin says he doesn’t want to. To say otherwise, is to assume that Putin is lying. (This makes 2 assumptions, 1: Putin wants to invade, and 2: he is lying about it).
hollandeWhat does Europe have to say about it? Hollande of France says Putin doesn’t want to annex Eastern Ukraine. This is a leader who has spent much time sitting with Putin in meetings, discussing Ukraine and trying to work out a solution. I should also state that this is something that Obama has NOT done. Who should you give the benefit of the doubt, a world leader who has actually met with Putin to discuss these issues, or one who has not? Again, the logical conclusion would be that Hollande is in a better position to know, and to assume otherwise is to assume Obama knows better having not spent as much time with Putin in finding a solution, yet another assumption working against Occam’s Razor.
#2: It Hasn’t Happened
If Russia wanted to invade Ukraine and annex the Donbass area, why hasn’t it done so? Lets examine possible reasons:
It’s afraid of sanctions. I hate to be captain obvious, but that didn’t stop Russia from allowing the Crimea area to hold a referendum and decide to peacefully rejoin the Russian Federation, did it? Well, did it? The assumption you would have to make is that Russia is not afraid enough of sanctions to allow Crimea to rejoin, but it is too afraid of sanctions that it will not allow the Donbass area to do the same. It makes no sense, and to force it to make sense runs against Occam’s Razor (least amount of assumptions).
The Russian Federation is militarily unable to take Kiev. I was hesitant to even list this option, but there are certainly some ultra-Nationalistic Kiev sympathizers out there who think that Ukraine is a formidable match for war against Russia. Putin said, if he really wanted to, he could take Kiev in 2 weeks. This was before Poroshenko ground his army into a bloody stub of its former self, so pro-rating the situation, perhaps it would only be 1 week now. He has still not done so.
There’s no evidence. After one year anniversary of Maiden in Kiev, there is literally no evidence of Russian involvement. In a joint press conference, Merkel and Hollande said there’s no evidence of Russian involvement in Ukraine, nor any Russian crossings at the border. In the previous linked article, I delve into this question exhaustively, showing how shoddy and illegitimate US evidence of Russian involvement in Ukraine is.
#3: It’s against Russian Interests
Would you be surprised if I told you that NATO works diligently to expand its influence? Examine the photo below for a moment.

This photo portrays the real situation on the ground since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Who is the aggressor? Putin’s Russia, or NATO’s Europe? Countries do not simply “switch sides”, the US has invested billions of dollars, through non government organizations (NGOs) installed in each country to wage propaganda. Pro-western candidates are propped up, pro-Russian governments are overthrown.
What would happen if Russia invaded, and annexed the Donbass region? The remainder of Ukraine (some sharing a border with Russia) would then be all that more empowered to rush into NATO without Donbass region voters to prohibit it. US military rockets could literally be placed within a few hundred kilometer of Moscow.
Let me digress here for a moment, and discuss “US exceptionalism”. Back in the 60’s the US cited the Monroe Doctrine to keep Russian missiles out of Cuba. A paraphrase of the Monroe Doctrine would be “If you even think about doing anything in the entire western hemisphere, Russia, we’ll nuke your ***, period.” In response to that, I’d like to pose a simple question: is it in the national security interest of Russia to keep NATO missiles off its border? Answer: hell yes. If you think otherwise, you’ve been drinking the “US is exceptional” koolaid.
Who has more of a vested interest in Ukraine? A country who for centuries consisted of most of Ukraine borders, who has been a trade partner, sister state in the Soviet Union, and generally tied to Ukraine by geography, language and culture? Or a country completely on the other side of the world, does not share same language, culture, whose citizens can’t even identify Ukraine on a map, and somehow went through most of its existence without ever confessing that Ukraine was strategically important to its national security in any way? (That is, of course, the United States).
Does Russia have a legitimate national security interest in promoting stability in its sister state of Ukraine? Yes. What happens if Russia annexes a little portion of it, allowing the rest of the Ukraine to gravitate to Europe (including a large stretch that remains on Russia’s border)? It’ll join NATO. Does leaving the Donbass region in Ukraine help even out the country enough to prevent it from joining NATO? Yes. Therefore, it is against Russia’s national security interest to annex the Donbass region.
#4: Russia Largest Country, Doesn’t Need More Territory
Again, I am being Captain Obvious. The point #3 above ended commenting on adding a “little area of Ukraine”. I can thoroughly explain why the US and all of Europe would like to get its grubby little fingers over the Ukraine, to plunder its resources. I’d like to share a video below that I originally found on Saker:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=68RErgHOzN8
The video above recounts what’s at stake in the Ukraine, how there are literally trillions of dollars wound up in oil, coal and other natural resources. These are all resources that Russia has in plenty, and makes a bundle selling to Europe. EU, on the other hand, doesn’t have access to these types of resources. This is the foundation for the IMF loans to Ukraine, and the attempt to rip Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and into the EU.
EU and US would love nothing more than for Ukraine to be a failed state, buying its resources for pennies on the dollar from fat oligarchs, while all of Ukraine is forced into the most severe austerity to keep the pro-Western Kiev junta in power.
Speaking of oligarchs in Ukraine, the US really doesn’t even make a token effort to hide its conflicts of interests. It used to be that the US went all-out in pulling off false-flags in order to justify wars. Nowadays, it gets by with killing a few Americans in high resolution studio made videos.
In lawsuits, a judge is supposed to recuse themselves if they have a conflict of interest in determining the outcome of the lawsuit. Unfortunately, that doesn’t prevent the executive branch, where US vice-president Joe Biden’s son Hunter becomes a top official in Burisma Holdings, the largest gas company in Ukraine. Average Americans should be disgusted that their country spends billions of dollars to subvert a country and empower a sort of corporate oligarch nepotism of the president and his cronies. Its well known in the mafia that illegitimate payments are often made to relatives of the mobsters.
Russia, on the other hand, doesn’t need it. It is the largest country in the world. It has the largest proven gas reserves in the world (interestingly enough, Iran has the 2nd largest, see the pattern of US interest in who they pick fights with?). It has a stake in the arctic, where there is yet more vast resources. Arguing that Russia needs Ukraine’s Donbass region for its resources is illogical and insincere.
#5: Evidence Points the United States is Lying

Liar in Chief graphic courtesy of Ben Garrison of GRR Graphics.
This article started out with asking the question, why would Russia want to invade Ukraine? Where’s the proof? Where is the smoking bullet, the photos, the tape recording of Putin saying this is his intention, anything? Now a year after the coup d’etat in Kiev, there is nothing. Kiev apologists love posting pictures of “Russian” tanks. In the last 24 hours, Ukraine army representitive Lysenko was claiming that Russia sent 20 more tanks over the border (from which Merkel and Hollande held a press conference over stating Lysenko is full of it). The truth is that from Debaltseve, the Donetsk People’s Republic received over 80 tanks from Ukraine, along with an “incalculable amount of ammo“.
Lets, however, reverse the scenario and ask other questions, like “Is there any proof the US may be lying?”
As referenced in the video above, Obama acknowledged that the US brokered a transition of power between Yanukovich and the Maidan rebels. This admission by Obama that the US has overthrown a democratically elected government in Ukraine, and replaced it with a military coup junta, shows the US is not clean as it makes accusations against Russia.
Victoria Nuland, the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs who infamously was quoted saying “**** the EU” in a conversation where US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt eagerly agreed, was caught stating that the US has spent over 5 billion dollars in “bringing democracy” to the Ukraine. Watch the video below.
How does one spend 5 billion dollars to “bring democracy” to Ukraine? The answer is simple. Funding opposition candidates, funding news organizations which function as propaganda and only telling one side of the story, and what of the violent coup d’etat itself? It’s fairly well proven that the US has no qualms killing people in order to achieve its geopolitical goals in the world. Regime change is the number one US export.
US and NATO aggresion. Take a look at the map below. This map shows all of NATOs bases around Russia.
russia-wants-war
The United Stats has confirmed a military buildup along Russia’s border. This is where the real arrogance, the extremism of US exceptionalism comes into play. Can you imagine Russia intervening with the drug cartels in Mexico? Or, amassing troops along the Rio Grande under the pretense of protecting Mexican civilians swimming across to the US? That sounds far fetched, and of course it would never happen — because Russia is a non-interventionalist country, but if Russia WAS doing that, it would be no different than what the US is doing worldwide. Can you imagine how Washington would respond if Russia did this?
In summary, Russia has absolutely no desire in empire building. Meanwhile, regime change and empire building is exactly what the US engages in as a primary foreign policy. It is time for US exceptionalism to end. They are all faux concerns spewed by US officials, the real game that Washington plays is subverting all countries that have bountiful stores of natural resources that can be had at pennies on the dollar.

My thought if the 42 to 60 was right but here new military:

1.Iraq
2.Russia
3.China
4.South Korea
5.North Korea
6.France
7.Vietnam
8.Japan
9.Turkey
10.Sweden
11.United States
12.Egypt
13.Serbia
14.Germany
15.Romania

 

[spilledthebeer]

I think it is the Musulmans who are to blame. Russia has frequently been a victim of Musulman terrorism from its Musulman Chechen separatists who want Chechnya to break away from Russia and become an independent state.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Chechnya WAS an independent state before Czarist troops invaded the place in the 1850`s!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


And the Chechens HAD HIGH HOPES of recovering their independence after the collapse of Soviet Union but chicken sh+T Bill Clinton DID NOT want to upset the Russians!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


So Clinton looked the other way while Russians bombed and shelled Chechen independence into the dirt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Russians WOULD NOT have trouble with Chechen terrorists if they would let Chechnya go!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Never]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Chechnya WAS an independent state before Czarist troops invaded the place in the 1850`s!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And the Chechens HAD HIGH HOPES of recovering their independence after the collapse of Soviet Union but chicken sh+T Bill Clinton DID NOT want to upset the Russians!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So Clinton looked the other way while Russians bombed and shelled Chechen independence into the dirt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Russians WOULD NOT have trouble with Chechen terrorists if they would let Chechnya go!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You mock right in the face.

Not a interest in Chechnya.

 

[spilledthebeer]

You mock right in the face.

Not a interest in Chechnya.

You deserve to be MOCKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Right in the face Comrade!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Never]

You deserve to be MOCKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Right in the face Comrade!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Your will is give and take but first you need to drink?????

 

[spilledthebeer]

Your will is give and take but first you need to drink?????

So when can we expect YOU to sober up and post a coherent sentence???????????????????


And........just so you know..........................


I SPILLED THE BEER............................................


and thus DID NOT get to drink it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[MHz]

Only drunks spill their beer.

'Comrade', wtfuk is that?? (psychopath cuddling up so the stab in the back is easier?)

Same reason Canada doesn't invade the US, we already have enough debt.

 

[Curious Cdn]

Only drunks spill their beer.
'Comrade', wtfuk is that?? (psychopath cuddling up so the stab in the back is easier?)
Same reason Canada doesn't invade the US, we already have enough debt.

We Scots sure don't ... or we suck it up off the table if we do.

 

[spilledthebeer]

We Scots sure don't ... or we suck it up off the table if we do.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


The USUAL CLUELESS Socialist musings of the useful idiot brigade!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Our Soviet troll Comrade Curious and his clueless compatriot MHz are out to lunch together!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Russia has ALREADY TAKEN pretty much all it wants from Ukraine!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Russia has grabbed the Crimea and all the good related farm land!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


And Russia has also grabbed the critical - for Russia - Black Sea Port of Sevastopol!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Ukrainians no longer have anything worth Russians bothering to fight for!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Danbones]

We Scots sure don't ... or we suck it up off the table if we do.

Suck it up butter coup

 

[spilledthebeer]

No. Much more likely to be the Muslims, when you consider that Russia has had its fair share of Muslim terrorism perpetrated by Chechen spearatists.

It’s the EU (and its armed wing Nato) that’s empire-building, not Putin

Two sides are required for a New Cold War — and there is no obvious need for an adversarial system in post-Soviet Europe

Peter Hitchens
7 March 2015
120 Comments

Just for once, let us try this argument with an open mind, employing arithmetic and geography and going easy on the adjectives. Two great land powers face each other. One of these powers, Russia, has given up control over 700,000 square miles of valuable territory. The other, the European Union, has gained control over 400,000 of those square miles. Which of these powers is expanding?

There remain 300,000 neutral square miles between the two, mostly in Ukraine. From Moscow’s point of view, this is already a grievous, irretrievable loss. As Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the canniest of the old Cold Warriors, wrote back in 1997, ‘Ukraine… is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.’

This diminished Russia feels the spread of the EU and its armed wing, Nato, like a blow on an unhealed bruise. In February 2007, for instance, Vladimir Putin asked sulkily, ‘Against whom is this expansion intended?’

I have never heard a clear answer to that question. The USSR, which Nato was founded to fight, expired in August 1991. So what is Nato’s purpose now? Why does it even still exist?

There is no obvious need for an adversarial system in post-Soviet Europe. Even if Russia wanted to reconquer its lost empire, as some believe (a belief for which there is no serious evidence), it is too weak and too poor to do this. So why not invite Russia to join the great western alliances? Alas, it is obvious to everyone, but never stated, that Russia cannot ever join either Nato or the EU, for if it did so it would unbalance them both by its sheer size. There are many possible ways of dealing with this. One would be an adult recognition of the limits of human power, combined with an understanding of Russia’s repeated experience of invasions and its lack of defensible borders.

Of Europe's two great powers - the EU and Russia - it is the EU which is expansionist

But we do not do this. Instead we have a noisy pseudo-moral crusade, which would not withstand five minutes of serious consideration. Mr Putin’s state is, beyond doubt, a sinister tyranny. But so is Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, which locks up far more journalists than does Russia. Turkey is an officially respectable Nato member, 40 years after seizing northern Cyprus, which it still occupies, in an almost exact precedent for Russia’s seizure of Crimea. If Putin disgusts us so much, then why are we and the USA happy to do business with Erdogan, and also to fawn upon Saudi Arabia and China?

Contrary to myth, the expansion of the EU into the former communist world has not magically brought universal peace, love and prosperity. Croatia’s economy has actually gone backwards since it joined. Corruption still exists in large parts of the EU’s new south-eastern territories, and I am not sure that the rule of law could be said to have been properly established there. So the idea that the recruitment of Ukraine to the ‘West’ will magically turn that troubled nation into a sunny paradise of freedom, probity and wealth is perhaps a little idealistic, not to say mistaken.

It is all so much clearer if we realise that this quarrel is about power and land, not virtue. In truth, much of the eastward expansion of Nato was caused by the EU’s initial unwillingness to take in backward, bankrupt and corrupt refugee states from the old Warsaw Pact. The policy could be summed up as ‘We won’t buy your tomatoes, but if it makes you happy you can shelter under our nuclear umbrella’. The promise was an empty assurance against a nonexistent threat. But an accidental arrangement hardened into a real confrontation. The less supine Russia was, the more its actions were interpreted as aggression in the West. Boris Yeltsin permitted western interests to rape his country, and did little to assert Russian power. So though he bombarded his own parliament, conducted a grisly war in Chechnya, raised corruption to Olympic levels and shamelessly rigged his own re-election, he yet remained a popular guest in western capitals and summits. Vladimir Putin’s similar sins, by contrast, provide a pretext for ostracism and historically illiterate comparisons between him and Hitler.

This is because of his increasing avowal of Russian sovereignty, and of an independent foreign policy. There have been many East-West squabbles and scrimmages, not all of them Russia’s fault. But the New Cold War really began in 2011, after Mr Putin dared to frustrate western — and Saudi — policy in Syria. George Friedman, the noted US intelligence and security expert, thinks Russia badly underestimated the level of American fury this would provoke. As Mr Friedman recently told the Moscow newspaper Kommersant, ‘It was in this situation that the United States took a look at Russia and thought about what it [Russia] wants to see happen least of all: instability in Ukraine.’

Mr Friedman (no Putin stooge) also rather engagingly agrees with Moscow that overthrow last February of Viktor Yanukovych was ‘the most blatant coup in history’. He is of course correct, as anyone unclouded by passion can see. The test of any action by your own side is to ask what you would think of it if the other side did it.

If Russia didn’t grasp how angry Washington would get over Syria, did the West realise how furiously Russia would respond to the EU Association Agreement and to the fall of Yanukovych? Perhaps not. Fearing above all the irrecoverable loss to Nato of its treasured naval station in Sevastopol, Russia reacted. After 23 years of sullenly appeasing the West, Moscow finally said ‘enough’. Since we’re all supposed to be against appeasement, shouldn’t we find this action understandable in a sovereign nation, even if we cannot actually praise it? And can anyone explain to me precisely why Britain, of all countries, should be siding with the expansion of the European Union and Nato into this dangerous and unstable part of the world?


It’s Nato that’s empire-building, not Putin » The Spectator

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Blackleaf has REALLY LOST IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



All those former Soviet nations voluntarily FLED from Soviet control as soon as they were able to !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


And they CHOSE to join NATO as their last, best hope of staying free of Russian occupying troops!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


This is the great issue that Soviet Socialists CANNOT discuss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


That Soviet regimes need land mines, barbed wire, guard dogs and machine guns to keep their people at home!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


But any westerner can walk across the border at will!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


ALL the former Warsaw Pact nations had some experience with democracy and capitalism BEFORE the Red Army invaded!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


And now- after having the 50 year Soviet experiment................................


those same nations HAVE GONE BACK to what works!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


North Koreans eat grass in hard times.............................................


South Koreans forgo holidays at hotels or fancy restaurant meals or buying a new car in hard times!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Every country that has experienced BOTH capitalism AND communism...................................


and then gets a FREE CHOICE...................................


wants capitalism!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Even worse.....................most of those former Soviet occupied countries SCORN LIE-beral multi culturalism and the socialist welfare state!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



No wonder our LIE-beral "useful idiots" want to distort history so often!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


The TRUTH is PAINFUL FOR THEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[MHz]

Liar. All the NATO aligned nations have been shit-holes since the black death came calling in 1350AD. Should I start a thread??

 

[MHz]

No.

Read a little history.

Wars start when the psychos fail to understand where the lines are...........

That is why you need to make it very clear.

ALL WARS ARE BANKERS' WARS


"The few who understand the system, will either be so interested from it's profits or so dependent on it's favors, that there will be no opposition from that class." -- Rothschild Brothers of London, 1863

"Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes it's laws."-- Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild

"Every Congressman, every Senator knows precisely what causes inflation...but can't, [won't] support the drastic reforms to stop it [repeal of the Federal Reserve Act] because it could cost him his job." -- Robert A. Heinlein, Expanded Universe

"The Federal Reserve banks are one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever seen. There is not a man within the sound of my voice who does not know that this nation is run by the International bankers." -- Congressman Louis T. McFadden (Rep. Pa)

 

[DaSleeper]

S till obsessed with the JOOS......THE JOOS!